


Killing Time

by cjmarlowe



Category: Justified
Genre: Blue Balls, M/M, past relationship, police standoff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 16:59:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1192812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjmarlowe/pseuds/cjmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cornered in a motel room with no way out, Raylan normally would have handled it with guns blazing. But with Art and his Marshals taking care of the situation from the outside, Raylan and Boyd have nothing to do but wait it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Killing Time

Raylan watched as Boyd stalked toward the door, stared at the closed curtains, and stalked back again. He was a caged animal, living the cliché in a way that made Raylan understand just where it had come from in the first place.

"Don't open that door."

"Now just what about me taking pains to move in the opposite direction from said exit makes you think I'm going to open in."

"The part where you keep going back," said Raylan. "Just sit down and wait it out."

"That strikes me as the exact opposite of what Raylan Givens would ordinarily do."

"Well, I happen to be working with a fair amount more information than usual," said Raylan.

Cornered in a motel room with no way out, Raylan normally would have handled it with guns blazing. He'd give himself the only fighting chance he could. But he'd been on the phone with Art since the standoff had begun, and Art's plan to flank the shooters was a lot better than Raylan's guns blazing approach. He could admit that.

"Don't open those curtains either."

"Do you think I'm an amateur?" said Boyd. "Do you think I've never had anyone want to kill me before?"

"I always pictured it under different circumstances," said Raylan. "It always was when I was on the other side of the door."

"Well, it's not you this time, is it," said Boyd, his words sharper than they even ordinarily were, designed to wound. But not Raylan this time. Boyd's words were aimed at himself. "Cousin Johnny's wanted me dead for years. He hasn't succeeded yet."

Johnny Crowder had never quite had this kind of muscle behind him either, nor that kind of loyalty. It was amazing what money could buy. Too bad he hadn't thought to purchase a mastermind, to avoid being placed in this situation in the first place. Assuming Boyd would be off his game because of Ava's current situation was not entirely untrue, but Boyd off his game was still craftier than most people at their best.

And they hadn't counted on Raylan.

No one could come in. No one could come out. A standoff, and likely both with reinforcements on the way.

"Art says to sit tight until we hear otherwise," said Raylan. His eyes were on the door, on and off. When they weren't, they were on Boyd.

Boyd was a man good at sitting still, at staying calm when the world was going to hell. This wasn't the Boyd Raylan had known all his life.

"What's it going to take to get you to stop moving?"

"An act of God?"

"I thought you didn't believe in God anymore," said Raylan.

"Well then I guess it'll be pretty challenging for him to produce a miracle, won't it."

Raylan took his hat off and balanced it on top of the bedside lamp, running a hand through his hair. It was hot and stuffy in the hotel room and there was a line of sweat right at his hairline that was threatening to itch.

"Sit the hell down, Boyd, before I shoot you myself."

Boyd took the opportunity to glare at him, as if Raylan didn't give him plenty such opportunities whenever they saw one another, and spitefully sat down on the bed next to him, boots up and all. At least he wasn't making a tempting shadow on the window anymore. For all he knew, Johnny had a sniper on the payroll these days; Raylan wouldn't put it past him.

"Well, I suppose that'll do," he said.

"I followed the letter of your instruction, Raylan. If you wanted me to do otherwise, you could have said so."

Part of Raylan actually wanted to say something kind to Boyd. They'd been something to one another once, something that gave them some kind of sadistically unbreakable bond no matter what both of them did to damage it. By rights it should have been severed a dozen times over. They'd tried to kill one another for Christ's sake.

But if they'd really tried, at least one of them would be dead already, not holed up in a motel room facing a common enemy, quite literally shoulder to shoulder.

"So," said Boyd. "Don't suppose you've got a deck of cards on you."

"Must've left it in my other jacket," said Raylan. "If you're really bored, there's a bible in that drawer right there."

"Thanks, but I'm not in the mood for origami right now," said Boyd.

"She's going to be all right, you know."

"You don't get to talk about Ava."

"Actually," said Raylan, "if there's one other person in the world who gets to talk about Ava, it's me." Boyd pressed his lips together and Raylan was halfway afraid he was going to start pacing the room again, but he stay put. "She's a survivor."

"We're all survivors," said Boyd. "She shouldn't be in there."

She did kill a man, Raylan wanted to say. It was a man who probably deserved to die, but the law was the law. Whether she _deserved_ it or not, well, that was down to one's individual moral code. She probably didn't deserve it for Delroy, but on the balance she'd probably earned her place.

He said none of that.

Boyd had earned a place too. And so had Raylan, when it came down to it. It was something he could not deny, at least not to himself.

"It is what it is," said Raylan. "She'll do all right. I know you've done the best you can for her."

"Not yet," said Boyd, "but I'm working on it."

Raylan was pretty sure he was better off without any more detail than that, let he be obliged to tell someone about it.

"We'll be out of here soon enough," said Raylan, glancing towards the window again. All quiet on the Western front. He wanted to go peek out the edge of it, and normally he would have, but he was trying to rid himself of some of his stupider impulses. If he was ever going to get in good with Art again, he was going to have to, and it turned out he valued that more than he realized he did.

"Your idea of 'soon enough' and mine seem to be fundamentally incompatible," said Boyd.

"Let me be very clear—"

"If you're planning on reminding me of the gravity of our mutual situation, then I am well aware," said Boyd, "which does not rid me of the impulse to do something about it."

"Well, that makes two of us," said Raylan. "I'd turn the television on to distract us, but I'm pretty sure all it shows are infomercials and porn."

"Not that I would object to at least one of those," said Boyd, "but the television doesn't work."

"You tried?"

"I like to know the particulars of any given environment," said Boyd. "You never known when you might need to use a television set as a distraction of another sort."

"Fair enough," said Raylan, "and yet I am confident this is not one of those situations."

"Not anymore," agreed Boyd.

"The infomercials or the porn?"

"What?"

"You said you wouldn't object to one of the two. The infomercials or the porn?"

"Well, I think infomercials are a tool of the devil," said Boyd, "so that leaves the porn."

"You wouldn't object to watching porn with me in the room?" said Raylan.

"Well...it wouldn't be the first time," said Boyd.

Those words hung in the air for a little while, a thing unacknowledged by both of them for a very long time. Raylan had got to thinking that it was never going to be mentioned at all.

"It was magazines, then," he said finally. "That's a different thing."

"That's just semantics," said Boyd.

"Boyd...I'm not sure what you're saying."

"I'm not saying anything particularly," said Boyd, "only reminiscing with an old friend about times long gone."

"Long gone," Raylan echoed him, never taking his eyes off Boyd. He didn't bring things up by accident, or without purpose. Not even in a stressful situation such as this one.

"It's funny, the parts of our story we choose to forget," he said. "We live edited lives, Raylan."

"Everyone does," said Raylan. "We aren't special."

"Oh, but we are," said Boyd. "You and me, Raylan. We knew we were different sorts, even when we were kids."

"I didn't know shit when I was a kid," said Raylan. As far as he was concerned, he was just like anyone else who grew up in Harlan County, the folk he grew up around, anyway. He was just one of the only ones who got out.

"Then I knew it for the both of us," said Boyd.

There was a sound in the next room over, clearly audible through the thin walls. Raylan hoped it was just an ordinary occupant, then he hoped it wasn't, in case the bullets started flying. It felt inevitable.

"Ava know?"

"About us?" said Boyd. "Not as a result of any conversation she's had with me."

"That's not an answer."

"It's funny, isn't it, how these things come back around in circles. You and me. You and Ava. Ava and me."

"That's not a circle," said Raylan.

"It's not a circle _yet_ ," said Boyd.

Well, it was hard to mistake what he was getting at there, though Raylan still wasn't sure where the hell he was going with it. Especially here, and now.

"Come on to me any harder and I'm going to think you're working with those guys on the outside, trying to distract me," he said. He didn't believe it, necessarily, but it had to be said.

"I am not," said Boyd. He looked away for a moment, not towards the window but towards the floor, and that was when Raylan got it. Because the truth was he and Boyd did understand one another better than most old acquaintances, even if they didn't always like what they understood, and he knew when Boyd was afraid. Not of dying, or at least no more than anyone. But afraid for Ava, and of not being with her again.

That was where all the circle talk came from. Him and Ava. Boyd and Ava.

Him and Boyd.

"Does she know?" he asked again.

Boyd just nodded this time, a more sincere and vulnerable gesture than Raylan'd seen out of him in a long time. "Probably always did, since she was a cheerleader and we were just boys in the mine. She's a sharp one, my Ava."

"That she is," said Raylan.

The noises from the next room over had quieted down, though he thought he heard faint television sounds. At least someone's was working. There was no sign of movement outside, but then the curtains obscured nearly all of that. They were still in a holding pattern, and Raylan was getting more and more restless.

"And you'd think she'd understand you...doin' what you're doing right now?"

"I think she would not only understand, she would participate," said Boyd. "If she thought there was any chance you wouldn't shoot someone just for proposing it."

"I try to have a very good reason before I shoot someone," said Raylan. "And I know you know that, Boyd. I don't draw my weapon unless I mean to use it."

"I am well aware of your stance on firearms, Raylan," said Boyd. "I am less informed about your stance on unwelcome propositions."

Raylan hesitated for a moment before answering, because he really only had one shot at this particular answer. "I wasn't aware we were talking about unwelcome propositions," he said.

Boyd was one of the most clever people Raylan'd ever known, even if he wasn't clever enough to get his ass out of Harlan for good before it was too late. He didn't need more than moment to parse that answer.

It wouldn't be fair to call what he did next 'attacking' Raylan, but the force of it did knock him around a little and he very nearly defended himself against the onslaught before his reflexes caught up and realized that Boyd was kissing him, not hitting him. Even expecting it—he never even twitched towards his gun—he still hadn't been ready for it.

"Much like my gun," he said, falling crosswise on the bed with Boyd looming over him, "I don't take my clothes off unless I mean to finish the job."

"I'll take that under advisement," said Boyd. "I think you're a liar, but I'll take it under advisement."

"I'm no liar."

"I think you'll take your clothes off with the tiniest provocation," said Boyd. He didn't say whether he believed him about the gun, or whether he thought Raylan needed very little provocation there too.

Boyd was one of the only people Raylan'd ever shot who didn't die from the experience.

It was a thought that should have put a damper on this whole thing, but it didn't. The two of them had always been much more complicated than that. Nineteen-year-old boys were supposed to be simple, with simple needs and simple desires. Maybe Boyd was right. They'd always been different.

Raylan shoved him, rolled him over till he was on top, and ran a rough hand through Boyd's hair.

"Careful," he says. "Don't be pulling on that."

"Don't worry, you won't be losing any of it in bed tonight." Raylan was not a man who always told the truth. He let Boyd unbutton his shirt, methodically, one at a time, even though he thought about yanking the buttons right off it. Harder to explain later, but possibly worth it now that they'd both committed to this course of action.

"Shall I promise the same?" said Boyd. "We are neither of us the men we once were."

"For better or for worse," said Raylan. They were _men_ now, which they had thought they were before but hadn't even been close, and they had a lot of history. A lot of baggage, as they said. "At least we know what the hell we're doing now, I would assume."

"You can assume what you like," said Boyd, which Raylan supposed he would because he wasn't in the mood to take the time to suss out Boyd's sexual history, nor share his own.

Raylan undid Boyd's collar button, just the one, then leaned in and sucked at the piece of throat that was exposed there. Just that one little bit till Boyd arched his neck and back in submission.

"Raylan," he said, his voice soft but no less compelling, "you are a piece of work."

"You have no idea," said Raylan. If he thought his memories of their inexperienced fumblings gave him any idea what he was in store for, he was sadly mistaken. Memories that Raylan suspected both of them nurtured more than they would ever let on to anyone else.

He undid another button and repeated the process, this time holding Boyd's wrists down as he did. His own shirt was hanging loose over top of them, and the next time Raylan sat up, he pulled it off entirely. Then his holster followed before someone was accidentally shot, placed within arm's reach next to the bed.

"This is going to take us quite some time, at this rate," said Boyd, without opening his eyes.

That was a level of trust that Raylan had not been expecting.

"If the idea is distraction from our current situation, which I believe that it is," said Raylan, "then the slower the better."

"I am not sure I subscribe to that philosophy when it comes to intercourse," said Boyd.

"You're just going to have to try it my way."

"You say that as though I'm not forced to do things your way nearly every time we encounter one another."

"At least this time we don't have weapons pointed at one another."

"Well, I suppose that depends on what you would call a weapon," said Boyd, "for I believe you have something pointed at me at the moment, and I am unsure of whether or not it is currently loaded with blanks."

"It is not," said Raylan. As his infant daughter could attest to, not that he was thinking about that for more than a flash of a moment right now. "But I don't believe that ought to be a particular concern between us."

"Not at the moment," said Boyd. "I'll keep it in mind for next time."

"Next time?"

"When Ava has been released from prison, Raylan."

He said it like it was the inevitable direction this encounter would be taking, as if this was not a moment of weakness for both of them, making the best of what might be a lethal situation, tying up loose ends and taking care of some old business before they met their maker.

Raylan knew he could die every time he left the house, and often when he was still in it. It was a risk for him more than it was for the average man, or even the average Marshal. But he felt death closer than usual right now, which meant they both wanted to feel a bit more alive, when there was nothing else they could do about it.

Or maybe he was projecting his own feelings onto Boyd. Either way, they were both hard and halfway to naked already.

"Do you like that idea?" said Boyd. "I think I felt a little something twitch."

"It's not a little something," said Raylan, "and it's doing more than twitching."

But he didn't unzip his pants, or do anything with Boyd's belt even though he really could certainly feel that Boyd's interest in this encounter was definitely more than academic. He returned to his methodical unbuttoning, proving that he could be patient when the situation demanded it, and that he did have some sort of rudimentary impulse control. At least until he got the last button undone, at which point he pulled Boyd up and tore the shirt off his body—literally, he both heard and felt tearing at one of the seams—and started grappling at his belt.

"Now that is the Raylan Givens I remember."

"I never tore your clothes off," said Raylan, as he continued to do exactly that in this moment.

"No, but you certainly didn't wait for anything before you tried to get into them."

"I seem to recall that being mutual," said Raylan. Nineteen years old, and the first time was always over almost before it started. Sometimes Raylan really missed nineteen, but most times he didn't miss it at all. "No more talking."

"Is that an order?" said Boyd. "Because I am good at neither following orders nor stopping talking, as you should well know."

"One has to assume there was a time when you were good at following orders," said Raylan. There had to have been; Boyd had been a soldier, even though that was a part of his life that Raylan knew about only through the telling of it. He hadn't been around for that, or any of the things afterwards that led him down a path darker even than the one Raylan imagined him following once, when he was young and leaving, and Boyd was young and staying, and there didn't seem to be anything he could do about that.

"Well, you know what they say about assuming," said Boyd.

"No more talking," Raylan tried again. It was good advice anyway, given their current situation. Good advice would also be _not to fuck Boyd_ but it seemed that ship had sailed. 

Boyd gave him a smile that Raylan _knew_ meant nothing good, then he was shoving him over and taking over the top, holding Raylan down with one arm while he stripped himself down with the other. It looked like it was a practiced move, and for a moment Raylan imagined him in bed with Ava, imagined what they looked like when they were together, what they did.

"Well oh my, Raylan," said Boyd. "I never thought I'd see you that happy to see me."

"I don't believe you're _seeing_ it so much as—"

"It's a figure of speech," said Boyd, raking his nails down Raylan's chest. "It's not meant to be taken literally. Much like you telling me to shut my trap."

Raylan didn't argue that it was, in fact, meant to be taken literally. Instead, he lead by example, shutting up and reaching down and wrapping his hand around Boyd's cock. He wasn't gentle with it, but then when had they ever been gentle with one another. Even their words sliced and battered.

"I'm going to guess that I'm not going to be fucking you this afternoon," said Boyd. Stress on the 'this afternoon' and not on 'fucking you', as though it were something already discussed and agreed to.

"Circumstances recommend against it," said Raylan, as Boyd opened his pants. "Are you going to let me take those off?"

"Are you asking for permission?"

Raylan was not. He shoved Boyd off himself and kicked his boots off and the rest was soon to follow. In his case, that definitely was a practiced move, though not always executed as flawlessly as that. When he came back he was on top again, hand back on Boyd's cock and Boyd's finally on his own.

With that neither of them tried to say anything else for once, meeting each other's eyes, stroking each other's cocks, taking turns pressing the other into the bed.

The sound of a gunshot caught them both off guard. Then shouting and doors slamming and several more shots. Then the window breaking. 

Raylan and Boyd both had their guns in their hands almost before they'd rolled off one another.

The guy—definitely not one of the white hats—was momentarily perplexed by what he encountered, looking around like he might have gotten the wrong room.

Raylan looked at Boyd's gun out of the corner of his eye.

"Don't be an idiot," he said. "Let me be the shooter. It's my damn job."

He didn't wait for Boyd's acquiescence. The guy pulled himself together and lifted his arm and Raylan was already firing, as quick and as easy as that. Boyd might not have been the greatest witness to the justification of the shooting, but the team of law enforcement outside who'd been part of the standoff would.

"Damn you, Raylan, I really needed to shoot right now."

Raylan just snorted and peered out the remains of the window before retreating back into the room and putting his gun back down on the dresser. No one else looked to come busting in, but if the foes were gone, that meant the friends were on their way.

"Well, shit," said Raylan, looking down at his cock. He sighed and forced his pants back up over it, wincing as he zipped up.

"Please tell your friends at the Marshal's office that they have the worst timing," said Boyd.

"I probably won't," said Raylan, "but I echo the sentiment, if that helps."

"It might help later," said Boyd. "It's not helping right now."

They were both presentable before Raylan answered Art's knock at the door. "I thought about coming in through the window, but I was feeling more civilized than that. We're clear out here. How are the two of you?"

"Oh, we're fine in here," said Raylan, while Boyd stashed the gun that Raylan absolutely had not seen in his hand at any point during the previous altercation. "Who fired the first shot?"

"Gutterson," said Art. "Once we had them surrounded, I told him to take the shot as soon as he had it."

"And yet someone came crashing in our window."

"Damn rookie didn't take him down like he was supposed to," said Art, shaking his head. "Lexington PD sent their very finest, as always."

"Probably hoping he'd get us," said Raylan. He kind of wished Art had argued a little harder and faster after he did.

"Well, at least you're both all right. Mr. Crowder, if you'll come with me?"

"Is that a request or an order?" said Boyd. "Because I have a prison visit I would very much like to make."

"We need statements from the both of you before anyone is going anywhere," said Art. "Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours."

"Don't suppose we can forego that for the moment," said Raylan, without much genuine hope. "It's been a bit of a trying day."

"Raylan, I have seen you black and blue and still show up at work," said Art. "This is nothing." Well, no one could say he didn't try. "Get your things and let's get out of here."

He didn't even dare give Boyd an apologetic look as Rachel came in to lead him out through the carnage. Or what Raylan presumed was carnage, given the nature of the situation.

"You should buy Gutterson a drink," said Art. "He's probably responsible for you being alive."

Which meant he was also responsible for Raylan's blue balls. Goddamnit. Well, it wouldn't be the first time Raylan'd taken care of them himself, if it was even an issue anymore once he managed to find a minute alone. Which would probably be about an hour from now, unless he managed to duck into an empty men's room.

"I'll keep that in mind," said Raylan. "Well, let's go get this over with."

The fact that he was thinking about looking Boyd up again when they were done, instead of doing something sensible at the situation, was something he kept to himself.


End file.
